The Impact of Village Rules and Formal Environmental Regulations on Farmers’ Cleaner Production Behavior: New Evidence from China

Abstract

Village rules and formal environmental regulations are of great significance for standardizing farmers’ cleaner production behavior, promoting green transformation of agriculture and realizing sustainable development of agriculture. Based on the survey data of 946 farmers in five provinces of China, taking seed coating technology, soil testing and formulated fertilization technology, subsoiling tillage technology, green technology for pest and disease control and straw returning technology as examples, this article empirically analyzes the impact of village rules and formal environmental regulations on farmers’ cleaner production behavior by using the multivariate probit model. When formal environmental regulations are relatively lacking or weak, village rules can be used as a useful supplement to formal environmental regulations to promote farmers’ participation in cleaner production. Based on this, this article argues that the important reason for formal environmental regulations falling into relative system failure is that village rules have not been paid enough attention in promoting farmers’ cleaner production behavior. In the future, we should not only continue to strengthen the role of formal environmental regulations in farmers’ cleaner production, but also cultivate the informal institution represented by the village rules, and build the regulatory system of mutual support between informal institution and formal institution.

The Impact of Rural Population Aging on Farmers’ Cleaner Production Behavior: Evidence from Five Provinces of the North China Plain

“…China's agricultural water consumption accounts for more than 60% of national economic water consumption, and agricultural irrigation water efficiency is only 75% of developed countries [3]. On the whole, the marginal benefit of China's agricultural inputs has decreased significantly, and the environmental capacity is approaching its limit [4]. The old agricultural development model has seriously affected the sustainable development of China's agriculture [5].…”

“…Cleaner agricultural production is a practical agricultural technology and scientific production management mode, which can not only meet the needs of agricultural production, but also make rational use of resources and protect the environment. For example, by strictly controlling the total amount of agricultural water, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and recycling livestock manure, crop straw, agricultural film and other agricultural wastes [4]. Its essence is to produce and use environment-friendly "green" agricultural inputs in the whole process of agricultural production, control agricultural pollution from the source, reduce the risk of agricultural production and service process to environment and human beings, realize the sustainable unity of social, economic and ecological benefits, and promote the sustainable development of agriculture.…”

The Impact of Environmental Regulations and Social Norms on Farmers’ Chemical Fertilizer Reduction Behaviors: An Investigation of Citrus Farmers in Southern China

“…Farmer's behavior can be influenced by many factors, both internal and external. The former mainly consist of farmers' livelihood endowments [10], perceptions [9,11], and risk preferences [12,13], whereas the latter mainly consist of agricultural policies [14], social norms [15], and market conditions [16]. There is no doubt that changing farmers' livelihood endowments is difficult in the short term [10], and intervening in the market via administrative means would be prohibitively expensive [17].…”

“…There is no doubt that changing farmers' livelihood endowments is difficult in the short term [10], and intervening in the market via administrative means would be prohibitively expensive [17]. Therefore, the aforementioned approaches are unfeasible, and some researchers have discovered that executing reasonable institutions is an effective way to encourage farmers to adopt cleaner production technologies [14,15,18].…”

“…Literature on the relationship between institutions and farmers' behavior focuses mainly on two categories of problems: (1) the influence of formal institutions on farmers' behavior [14,19] and (2) the influence of informal institutions on farmers' behavior [20]. Currently, China's rural society is transitioning from a traditional society to a modern society.…”